Ending Or Beginning?
by silverjigsaw
Summary: Like most people, I didn't think much of the ending of Book 13, and it occurred to me that it might have been something else entirely?


It's been eons since I've been on this site, but I've got the net back, baby! So now I'm going to submit to a fandom that I've _never submitted to before!_ What fun!

I hope you enjoy this. Remember, I didn't invent this, that brilliant man did.

-_The Author

* * *

_

_The baby paused, and looked at the back of the boat, where the nameplate had been affixed. She had no way of knowing this, of course, but the nameplate had been nailed to the back of the boat by a person standing on the very spot she was standing—at least, as far as my research has shown. The infant was standing on a spot in someone else's story, during a moment of her own, but she was thinking neither of the story far in the past nor of her own, which stretched into the future like the open sea. She was gazing at the nameplate, and her forehead was wrinkled in concentration. Finally, she uttered a word. The Baudelaire orphans gasped when they heard it, but they could not say for sure whether she was reading the word out loud or merely stating her own name, and indeed they never learned this. Perhaps this last word was the baby's first secret, joining the secrets the Baudelaires were keeping from the baby, and all the other secrets immersed in the world. Perhaps it is better not to know precisely what was meant by this word, as some things are better left in the great unknown. There are some words, of course, that are better left unsaid, but not, I believe, the word uttered by my niece, a word which here means the story is over._

Beatrice.

Who, upon reading these words, set the final book down and sighed. She peered at the strange detective, working somewhere in the distance, and stood, and went to him.

She was ten years old, younger than some of her siblings had been when they had set out on their series of unfortunate events, but older than Sunny had been. Not _sibling_, she realized; she had been thinking, to the last, that her mother had survived the fire, but this was not so. The woman she had thought was her mother was not even her mother, but a woman this detective had held very dear, a very long time ago. And her mother was Kit Snicket, this man's sister. Her uncle. Answers, to questions she never asked. But not an answer to the question she wanted most of all.

"So that's it," she said, by way of greeting.

He was loading the boat. It wasn't the same boat she had apparently left the island on the first time, but it was a fine boat, nonetheless. He set down his package, and looked at her, or at least turned his hat'd and shadowed head towards her.

"You don't know where they are," she said. "I tried so hard to contact you. I followed you all over the city – from Briny Beach to root beer parlors, and up and down braes and drinking yak's milk and sending you messages by my pet bat, and I lived in a cave for six months, and I had to sell my mother's ring for information, and I – I _still_ don't know where my siblings are!"

She cried. She had, in fact, been crying for most of this speech, but it would have been awkward to tell you this until just now. The detective bent down and hugged her, and she cried on his shoulder for a while, until she managed to get a hold on herself.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't realize this was a sad occasion."

She sniffed, and smiled. "The world is quiet here."

Then he turned a little, and pointed, just a little past the slightly-setting sun. "They went in that direction."

She gaped. "Really?"

"Really."

And he led her to the boat, and helped her in. She saw, inside the boat, food and clothing and books, and the cage that held her pet bat. She waited for him to climb in, but instead he began walking the boat farther into the rising tidal pool.

He was going to stay here, on the island, where all things ended, eventually.

He let go. The boat floated on.

She said, "Goodbye, Lemony Snicket."

He said, "Goodbye, Beatrice."


End file.
